Banjo player Noam Pikelny doesn’t take playing in Punch Brothers for granted.

“This is kind of the band of a lifetime,” said Pikelny in a call from Telluride, Colo., where they are performing. “We’re in it for the long haul. We push each other creatively.”

Punch Brothers are one of most acclaimed groups in acoustic music. Led by virtuoso mandolinist Chris Thile, who recently replaced Garrison Keillor as the host of “A Prairie Home Companion,” the group includes Pikelny, guitarist Chris Eldridge, violinist Gabe Witcher and bassist Paul Kowert.

Of course, what to call the group has always been a challenge. Punch Brothers incorporate classical, bluegrass, jazz, folk and rock into their sound.

“Those are the most entertaining things we see when people try to explain what kind of music we play,” said Pikelny. “Every now and then, we’ll see ourselves described in the press as a certain kind of band, but we never offer those genre labels. We’ve never sat down and said, ‘We’re a progressive bluegrass band’ or ‘We’re a modern string quintet with bluegrass instruments.’ We’ve always felt like it’s a pointless pursuit to try to codify that. So, when I see things where we’re described as a ‘country classical chamber ensemble’ that feels so far off the mark. Even though there are some elements of that that are true, I would never describe the band as that. I wouldn’t say any of those are wrong.”

The group carries on a movement started by acoustic pioneers, including Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Edgar Meyer and other greats who defied categorization. It got another boost from Thile’s former group Nickel Creek. Pikelny said the easiest thing is to just call it “American acoustic.”

Punch Brothers first came together in 2006 when the five friends decided to record a project together. That became the album “How to Grow a Woman From the Ground,” credited to Chris Thile. The group enjoyed making music together so much, though, they decided to continue playing together. All had other projects, but there was something special about this one. After initially calling the group How To Grow a Band and then The Tensions Mountain Boys, the band decided on Punch Brothers.

The band debuted Thile’s 40-minute suite “The Blind Leaving the Blind” at Carnegie Hall in 2007 and cemented the partnership. Pikelny said the past decade has been a joy and it’s different than any group he’s ever been in.

“My four bandmates are restlessly imaginative and have this vociferous appetite for music,” said Pikelny. “I just think there’s no substitute for those four personalities combined with the effect of 10-plus years of making music with each other. It’s something you can’t replicate. You can’t speed up that process of what happens when people have been playing music together for 10 years, getting to know each other musically and getting to know how to anticipate and respond and support each other. The band kind of seems like an extension as ourselves as individuals. The collective has become such a huge part of our identity.”

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He said Punch Brothers probably influences the members’ outside projects more than the outside projects come back into the Punch Brothers.

The music that the band plays, said Pikelny, comes together in a numbers of different ways:

“Sometimes it’s non-musical conversation where we’re talking about the goals or a vision for a piece and then we’ll start experimenting with ways to execute that. Other times, there’s just a little seed of an idea. There’ll be a couple-bar phrase that someone brings to the band and someone bounces that off of the council and we’ll start mining that for song possibilities. Some parts of songs or entire songs are much more full visions before they’re brought to the band, ‘The Blind Leaving the Blind’ being the prime example of something that was composed by Chris. He scored the entire thing. He left room for improvisation and interpretation, but it was pre-composed.

Punch Brothers(Photo11: submitted)

“When we get together for a writing session we’ll be in a room and every one will bring ideas that they’ve been working on and they’ll audition it for the band or play it on an iPhone voice memo. We’ll kind of go through all these ideas or seeds or starts and see what appeals to the band. Everybody has so many outlets outside of the band that we’ve kind of adopted the philosophy that if it’s not ringing all the bells, if it’s not appealing to everybody in the band, then it’s not a Punch Brothers idea. It’s something that should be cultivated outside of the band. That process can be really painstaking or really slow, but ultimately it leads to a result that everybody takes serious ownership of, regardless of where it originated. The end result was something shaped by this shared experience.”